


Like one that fed on awe

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Conversations, Engagement, F/M, Female Friendship, Male Friendship, Marriage, Relationship Advice, Romance, Sewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 00:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10524705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: He would be the first to admit curiosity was his greatest virtue and perhaps, downfall.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Lady's Fancy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10512342) by [RedFlagsAndDiamonds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFlagsAndDiamonds/pseuds/RedFlagsAndDiamonds). 



“You never told me what Emma asked you,” Jed remarked. 

It seemed a safe enough time to broach the topic; they were alone in the officers’ lounge and Byron and Anne had departed for destinations unknown. They might be interrupted but it was unlikely and Mary was sitting across from him with some mending in her lap, much as he might expect in a few weeks, but then there would be no concern about a knock on the door or a demand and he would only risk her gentle wrath if he walked over and swept all the sewing away so he could kiss her hands or pull her to him for an impromptu waltz around their sitting room. Soon enough, he told himself—every morning, every night he said it, every time the thought of her came unbidden to his mind, her red lips pursed in a frustrated pout, the furrow in her brow when she could not construe her mathematics, the glance she tossed him over her shoulder when he left the ward that was always a second, warmer farewell. He hadn’t thought long about what to discuss with her but it had been a dull day and he was not ashamed to admit he relished the spice of gossip. Henry had seemed to return to his equable, steady temperament after their own awkward conversation and he found himself wondering if there was yet any intelligence from Mary’s tête–à–tête with Emma that would pique his interest.

“Are you sure you want me to? If I should tell you, you cannot un-know it,” she replied, peering at the seam, biting her lip a little. She had confessed she did not care much for needlework but that she did it nonetheless as it was a woman’s work. The firelight gleamed on the thimble she wore.

He considered what she said. Speaking with Henry had been a curious ordeal. It was partly the acute tension he’d felt from the younger man, the diffidence that had made the chaplain seem even younger, that had made Jed feel like Methuselah, aware of the twinge in his left shoulder, how much grey sprinkled his beard and temples. The subject matter itself, the proper satisfaction of women, was not forbidden among men, though the setting made a difference. Jed had always found most American men blustered but had little of substance to actually say that was helpful whereas the Frenchman that he mixed among during his time in Paris were more elegantly oblique but far more informative; when he put their lessons into practice, he found they were also astute and accomplished and that he might be thought the same for keeping their advice in mind. The easy acceptance of the mutual desire for sexual pleasure was a revelation, one that he had struggled to communicate to the Yankee chaplain. He’d realized as he muddled through the halting exchanges how blessed he was to be marrying a widow, beyond that, an unusual woman who valued science and spoke frankly about the nature of the body without some strangling modesty to mute her. It clearly had not been so with Mrs. Henry Hopkins, though Jed was obscurely relieved for his friend that the issue was not frigidity or apprehension, but almost a lack of language for any effective communication or validation. Even speaking with another man, one he had presumed to have a greater knowledge about carnal matters and less compunction about discussing them, Henry had barely managed to make himself understood in even the vaguest terms. There had been some alteration in the marital bed, one whose significance Henry could not contextualize, and he sought reassurance without ever saying what had transpired. Jed had asked questions that he thought Henry could tolerate, finally saying,

“If she fell asleep with a smile, whatever you did must have been all to the good. It sounds like she trusts you and that’s what’s called for more than anything.”

Henry had nodded then, very seriously, and taken himself off and Jed had counted the hours until he could find Mary and relay the conversation, seeking his own consolation. But that encounter had gone differently than he’d anticipated, taken them to a place he had never imagined and now longed to return to, if only in his dreams until the night he shut the door behind them and Mary wore only her wedding ring. Now he wondered what she knew of her friend’s marriage and whether he truly wanted to as well.

“I rather think I will defer to you,” he said slowly. Her response was swift as she lifted her face from the folds of muslin in her lap and gave him a delighted smile as if he had just told her the best news.

“I should mark this down, this complete deference, it has the rarity of a solar eclipse—unless, is this a harbinger of days to come? Shall every day of our marriage be so sweet?” Mary said, winsome and wry, pleased with him and with her rejoinder.

“If I have any say over it, yes, it will be this sweet. Sweeter,” he said grinning but sincere, feeling younger than Henry, hopeful and not at all foolish. Mary tilted her head and gave him a look that was a caress, of a kind his mistresses had never thought he needed and his former wife had never cared to offer.

“Perhaps I was wrong earlier, that night in the supply room. There are some secrets I will not share with you—but they will never be mine. My heart you will have entire, you already do, you know,” Mary replied, folding the shirt in her lap and placing it atop the basket at her side. Soon enough, he told himself, he would not have to wait to take her to their room when she spoke as she had, when she laid the last piece of mending aside. Soon enough, he would remove the thimble from her finger and kiss each one as she laughed, until she stopped laughing and smiled, until she fell asleep in his arms with her lips still curved, the corners tucked in and her happiness audible with every contented breath she drew.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought some more chatting between Mary and Jed about their conversations with Henry and Emma would be fun, especially to get some insight about Jed and Henry's conversation. The title is from the poem titled "Her spirit rose to such a height."


End file.
